Why I love Everything2

Like a lot of people my very first contact with E2 occured through slashdot. This must have happened 6-8 years ago and I lost sight of this site for a while after that. What I loved at the time were the humorous and quirky write-ups that could be found here.

This other bookmark is Uberman's Sleep Schedule. I've read this years ago, and it sparked something in me. It led me to read a lot about polyphasic sleep and I seriously considered trying it myself for a while.

What these nodes have in common is that they're both well written; they're slightly humorous and they carry you along while being mildly informative. To me this is a great combination, I like to be entertained while I'm being educated. A skill my college teachers have seldomly mastered, unfortunately, but some of E2's greatest writers do possess this talent.

From the Highway tales I have developed my absolute favourite E2 pastime. I'm not really here for the writing, I consider myself merely a decent writer, and don't want to bother other people with my ramblings too much. I'm here for other peoples writings, I love to read, and random node surfing is a great way to be entertained and informed while not having to keep your concentration for more than ten minutes.

"random node surfing"

This is the reading/surfing habit I've developed over the years: I find one or more starting nodes from the new wu's or recently cooled on the frontpage. I read these nodes and then check the top 2 or 3 rows of softlinks. These practically always contain several interesting links to other nodes, and I open them in new tabs (yay, firefox!). Each read tab is closed, automatically bringing me to the next tab in line. There's a reasonable chance that this tab is about something totally unrelated to the previous node, keeping me fresh and interested, while also allowing me to take a grander view of the world's connectedness.

I hope this may inspire you to enjoy some hours getting entertained and slightly educated on E2.

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No, Actually I Despise Everything2

Heartache, headache, thy name is Everything2!

What on earth would possess a mature person with a modicum of intelligence to sit at
a computer for hours at a time reading and writing (astoundingly, absent any financial compensation!) when there're things to be
done. Important things. Things like:

How often have I heard my significant other cry out, "Honey, are you on
that damned computer again!" She now has a support group of Internet widows
she chats with regularly. Not unlike a member of Al-Anon, she no longer looks
on helplessly, crying out for attention, but rather has learned to "detach with love."

So many of the thankless whelps who populate the site are so tremendously smarter than I, I now have a significant inferiority complex. I mean, I feel intellectually small in the presence of people who are capable of having a technical conversation with Stephen Hawking.

This site has also warped my view of politics. My friends have
forsaken me because my Conservative views have given way to a more Liberal
mode of thinking. I've even considered voting Democrat in the November
election (Heaven forbid!)

I can no longer stare into a store window display or otherwise sight-see
without my train of thought being interrupted by a voice in my head whispering,
"That'd be teh nodeshell!"

Misspellings, typos, poor grammar and other errata in books, magazines and
other printed materials now stand out to me and make me as uncomfortable as
would a big red zit on my nose the morning of an important business meeting.
When asked to say a little about myself at a business networking reception, I
refused and asserted that I didn't want to engage in "GTKY-speak."

Since being doomed to endless toil at the computer screen, my once-healthy
diet now consists of junk food snacks and copious amounts of coffee. Despite the
coffee, I occasionally fall into a blissful sleep, only to have nightmares about
my writeups being nuked. When I awake with a start, in a cold sweat, I'm once
again faced by the computer. It may be displaying a screen saver at the
moment, but the instant I touch the mouse, E2 will be there. No doubt, there'll
also be a hundred or more messages in my inbox.

The others hopelessly caught in E2's gaping maw do a fine job at acting
cheerful. They've even come to my emotional aid, foiling attempts to end all my suffering on not one but
two occasions. E2 even followed me into my father's hospital room as he lay
dying. A group of noders telephoned from a nodermeet in Great Britain at great
personal expense to ask how I was doing. I mean, how annoying is that?!

Amazingly, nearly every one of the E2ers accepts me as I am, complete with
opinions, faults, and insight. How can this be? How can the legions of clean-cut
college students find anything in common with a fat, graying old man? They
manage to, somehow.

I gotta add that I've "met" some of the loveliest people I've ever had the privilege of getting to know right here on E2. These people and this fellowship are a source of great joy for me.

So to summarize, I hate it, but am hopelessly doomed to continue the vicious
cycle of reading, writing, reading, writing, reading, writing...

Okay... Lessee... (Leaving loving all the greatnodes aside, because somehow that is implicit) I love Everything2 because I have been finding friendship, appreciation, criticism, and a feeling of belonging. Knowing that, for better or for worse, around the world noders have come to recognise my name is daunting. Knowing that I have made some wonderful friends, and many more great acquaintances makes me happy. Accepting that some noders don't like me, and learning from that experience is educating. All in all I have become enriched in so many ways from being a member, or a part, of the E2 community.

In addition to this, I have been enticed out of my self imposed Danish exile. If I wanted to meet noders outside of Denmark, I'd have to travel. In the last three years I have travelled more than I have travelled in my entire life. And the people I have met have been fascinating people, each in their own way.

E2 is an important part my life, but I don't feel it is a substitute for anything that could have been. I love it here because E2 is the place where I find good, funny, solid, silly, lovely, impressing, weird people and information, facts and 'ficts'.

I log on every day, with very, very few exeptions. I prowl the nodegel and read old nodes, correct little typos and stuff, talk to people and offer my editorial and general assistance should they need it, and try to make myself useful. I don't contribute to the nodegel as often, or as regularly as I want to, mostly due to real life issues like an ever growing work load and stress, but I am always around. I don't see myself leaving the site in any foreseeable future.

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You know how MySpace would be better without the dreadful layouts, and LiveJournal would be better if more people could spell properly, and Wiki would be better if it had a soul and AOL would be better if... well, if it no longer existed?

E2 is all those things, and more. This place was one of the first sites on the web to be built on the basis of user-contributed content. Back in the last millenium – 1999 – this place was founded by a bunch of liberal-minded geeks and it's been developing ever since.

We're still pretty geeky. Still pretty liberal-minded, but nowadays there's a broader mix of people and the writing is a lot better, too.

If you've ever been in a minority, especially a disliked minority, you'll find a second home here. E2 is how the web ought to be. No matter what your background, sexuality or religion, you'll find tolerance, acceptance and welcome here. Just do us the courtesy of behaving in the same way, K?

Another great thing about E2 is that it is not for everyone. You might have a hundred 'friends' on MySpace or Facebook, but this place has developed into a community of a few hundred people who come from all around the world who like to hang out together. On the whole, we like reading and writing. We're adventurous and open to new things. Some of us are pretty smart, but our smarts aren't always measured in degrees, or other formal qualifications.

Some of us travel around the world and meet up; we open our homes to these 'strangers' about whom we know nothing except their words. Invariably, we have a great time doing it.

If all your friends on Facebook are like that, congratulations! But if sometimes you think it might be good to find a place where a few hundred intelligent people, hang out; where you can chat to them, laugh, be serious and learn about each other slowly, you could do worse than try this place out.

Intrigued? Let me tell you more.

Back in the '90s the guys who set up Slashdot also set up a site called Everything. That evolved into Everything2.com, and the original E1 site closed for business. People found E2 and they fell in love with the place.

Back then, a lot of college kids were involved. And we all know what college kids want. They want to get laid. So E2 started out with guys talking about how they think and feel around girls. Seeing a desperate need among the guys, the girls wrote about how they think and feel when they see a guy.

It was fun. Not all of that survived the test of time, but that phase of E2 left us with one of the best collections of writing and advice about sexuality and dating on the web. Remember I said we're pretty liberal? Try looking at a few of these links fisting, cunt, How to give a blow job, Anal sex, cunnilingus. Some of it could be described as erotica. Others could be described as porn, and some as textbook instructions. However you want to describe it, there's not a lot like it out there on the web. You certainly won't find this stuff on AOL.

Over the years we grew up. There were weddings and couplings. The college kids moved on, got jobs, dropped out and discovered they had responsibilities. Their writing style started to change.

We still get our share of the college kids. You can see their mouths drop open – figuratively speaking – when they see what we wrote about sex back in the day, and then they stop short when they see some of the stuff we publish today. Some lurk. Some stay and contribute. Others find it all so distasteful they run off screaming.

We get our share of trolls too. The simple ones quickly get bored but we like to keep some of the better ones, just to remind ourselves not to take things too seriously.

If I tell you the very best thing I love about E2, that won't be the very best thing you love about E2 and it won't be the very best thing another person loves about this place.

My very best thing about E2 is that it's a slow way of getting to know people. Weird people; strange people; exciting people.

Most of these people you'd never get to meet in your daily life. Or if you did, you'd never know how exciting they are. We all generate shells that are supposed to protect ourselves from the outside world. Like the rest of the web, E2 has a level of anonymity afforded by user nicks and the interweb.

You know what? Almost all of us share our real names and our real addresses. More than that, we share intimate details of our lives. We do that, knowing our friends on E2 can be more caring and more supportive than our family or our real-world friends. Like I said, we're liberal, but that means there's not a problem or situation we've never heard of; never faced. Someone somewhere on E2 has been there and done that.

There's no rush on E2. It all works better if you take it slowly. We're all here and most of us are going to stay here for a few more years. We'll chat amongst ourselves and we'll write and the casual visitor can read as much or as little as they want.

We're still not perfect. We can still be a bit spiky to newcomers who don't RTFM. But on the whole, if you've got the time and got the patience, the people here are worth it.

I'm actually sorry because when I first started here, 7 years ago, that’s what I wanted to do.

So why?

Why should I while away my time reading and writing in this place where, after seven years of observation and the occasional urge to write something, I still exist, largely in a state of anonymity? The people here, most of you don't know who I am. You wouldn't recognize me if you saw me on the street and the same is true of me. I wouldn't know a GhettoAardvark, from a IWhoSawTheFace, from a Demeter, so why the hell, after 7 years, am I still here?

You see, for years to me this place was almost imaginary in it's nature. I'm not good at this whole internet communication thing, whatever it is. If you've know me well then you know I do my best communicating face to face, mostly with my eyes, and with my hands. I do my less articulate and intelligent communicating with my voice and my least effective communicating with a keyboard. To me this place was just a room full of Ether, something so alien and foreign to me as to be unreal. I came here to read and saw so many beautiful and useful things. This place has been invaluable in my transition from boy to man.

Those things are only pretty nothings. They have nothing do with what is here that I love, or why I love what I do about this place. The fact that this website taught me how to be a better writer, or a faster reader, or even helped me hone my skills as a lover isn't what keeps me hitting that 'login' or that 'stubmit' button.

So why then do I love E2?

I love E2 because panting in the sunset because, I chased the Frisbee too far too many times is the best way to start an evening of drinking.

says re Electrolyte imbalance: For the moment, this is your best - tough stuff, written with a light, sympathetic hand. Congratulations! But I see a lot more coming ... And some of the fiction is most endearing. Do I sound patronising? Well, I certainly don't want to. But I DO like your writing, so I have the right of ... whatever.

says By the way, I would assume you were being sarcastic, if it weren't you.

says Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, it wasn't anything personal, and you did a very nice job with the narrator's voice.

says I'll tell you something: I pegged you early on as a total E2 addict, and so did a few others. You should quit now, while you can. It's totally addictive. You'll meet someone, fall in love, it'll ruin your family. Don't laugh, please, because it happened to me. So I look for folks like you and try to warn you.

saysSystematic downvoting happens. And yeah, it sucks. By the time it's happened to you five or six times, though, the sting of the insult wears off completely and you're just annoyed and you start to marvel to yourself about how important you obviously are to that other person. That's probably really unhelpful advice, isn't it? It's an abuse of the voting system and I've thought for awhile that there should probably be some automated way of stopping it (like, say, if you cast three downvotes in a row on one person's work in one day, you can't vote on their stuff again until votes turn over, or something like that. Just to slow people down until they're willing to act like grown-ups again.) I know you worry a lot about what people think -- and obviously that's normal, we all do that. But you can't let yourself dwell on it. It's not worth it, really.

says At work. Should be home soon. Lonely is an uuuugly suit to wear. Don't look, I'm hideous.

says Nothing went wrong, it is just painful to see her, is what I mean.

says Well, then you're aces in my book and you can call me if you ever want to talk. My number is

says I hate those people who love exercise. I've tried it. It's fucking misery. People who really enjoy it should be shot.

says I did much the same thing with all of my writeups before posting them. I let my wife read and edit them and before I would post them I'd ask her 3 questions: 1) Can the point of my writeup be described in one sentence? 2) Did what I say in the writeup merit saying? and 3) Is the writeup titled properly?

says it's a massive internal conflict! and you can see exactly where I get it if you look at my mother and father. My mother is totally emotional, intuitive and irrational. My father is like a wooden block emotionally, but highly social and rational.

says that's fine. that's evolution :-) new shit is better than old shit

says you take care too :-) you're fun to talk to and I like your perception of things. "Until you realize that you knew how to deal with the old shit" is a very good comeback that made me think....

says Would have been funny if you did it publicly :) We could have a fake fight in the catbox if you like!

says Hey, saw you taking crap yesterday in the catbox.. I'll apologize for those without manners enough to do so themselves. That's why you won't find me in it. I very rarely participate in that perticular social aspect of E2. I also very rarely msg noders personally if I haven't already met them. Feel all sorts of loved :)

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I don't. That would be idiocy - it's just a website after all. I have come to love someofthefriendsI’vemadethroughE2, but frankly that could have been the case if I’d happened to join a gardening club, so I don’t give the database any special credit for that.

But I am passionate about E2, about its ethos and its survival. I'm passionately against diluting the powerful simplicity of it, and even more passionately dedicated to encouraging its growth and proliferation – though without compromising any of the commitment to quality and rigour that it embodies.

We're living through the epoch of the subjective. Existentialism and relativism got drunk sometime in the seventies, fell into bed together and spawned a deformed, maleficent, destructive monstrosity that bedevils education, public debate and personal intellectual intercourse: the devourer of opinion. In today’s intellectual environment, any argument that is not based on either a) so called verifiable fact or b) deeply held personal feelings is not a viable starting point for a debate. Disputes and disagreements quickly degenerate into quibbles about methodology or slinging matches between instances of anecdotal personal experience.

The cumulative damage to society is incalculable; without a solid basis of opinion and ideology there is no fertile ground for the sort of viable philosophical work that can give rise to a John Stuart Mill, a Thomas Paine or a Karl Marx – practical philosophers engaged in finding ideological solutions to everyday human dilemmas. The retreat of 20th century philosophy into the highly formalacademic sphere and its capitulation to the superficially compelling methodology of the sciences has left the West ideologically rudderless for the past 30 to 50 years, a directionless depredation that is beginning to make itself felt more and more in everyday pressures like infrastructure, education, healthcare and of course foreign policy and the environment.

Alone in the midst of the highlysubjective and the pretentiously “objective” manifestations of Web 2.0, Everything2 stands out as a haven for opinion, thought, debate (real debate – not flame wars and slinging matches, but the making of consecutive but independent arguments that is so important to dialectics) and ideology. As such I see it not only as a source of unending pleasure thanks to the beauty and inventiveness of so much of the writing, but as an important intellectual bulwark against the anti-Enlightenment forces threatening us with a second Dark Age.

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Googling a favourite song (we have a map of the piano) led me here. At the time I didn't quite realise it, but this has turned out to be what wiki isn't (as noted by AspieDad) - a living instrument that teaches and engages because its participants, readers, commentators and writers alike engage each other's imaginations.

I suspect this is something wiki can never be, because it is tied down in that formal format; in that it takes itself far too seriously and seeks to retain the appearance of being objective therefore stifling creativity.

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You'd think that people would've had enough of silly love songs.
I look around me and I see it isn't so.
Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs.
And what's wrong with that?

I. In the beginning there was light. And it was good.

I found this place by accident 7+ years ago. I was on a search for information about something and one of the links that the magic google genie spit out brought me here. Isn't that always the way? You look for something which leads you to something else? It was all green and white and, well quite frankly, unattractive. But, at the time, I wasn't looking for pretty, I was looking for knowledge. The words I read first were something one would expect to find looking into an encyclopedia entry. It gave me an overview of the information I was looking for, a good starting point. The second set of words were totally irreverent, poking fun,while at the same time bringing up counterpoints to the first. I laughed.

Then I found the shaded links below the topic essays, some with catchy titles. "HEY! I wonder what this one is about?" I clicked. and read. and laughed. and found another, and followed, and then another, and then another. I was wiping tears out of my eyes by the time I was done. My interest was more the piqued. It didn't even matter that the color scheme was blech. The words sucked me in. I thought, I can do that. Hell, I had been doing that for years, writing random bits and pieces in journals. Why not? Shortly after that decision, I learned how to format with basic html, I learned about hard links and soft links and OH MY!, pipe links! Pipe links. The friggin chocolate filling that gave depth and breadth and could skew something you said just a tad or even CHANGE what you said into something completely different. That, my friends, was wicked awesome. It was the fish hook caught in my mouth while this Weird headless death cult of writer apostles slowly reeled me in.

IIB. Skin slides against skin, ruffled hair, lens envy and other stories of the flesh...

I will tell you a secret This one noder drove me up a tree in the beginning. I would ball my hands in a fist and shout to the stars. I mean, how dare he? He challenged me. But the truth is, had he not pushed so very hard, had he not pushed and pushed and pushed some more, I would not have dug my heels in and tried again and again. I would not have reached so deep inside to pull the very emotion out of my belly. He challenged me. I am stronger for it.

He lay down next to me and when his breathing became even, I listened to it for a time. The murmur of whispers and soft laughter melting away into the night as the focus is drawn into the soft rhythmic inhale, exhale. Here is peace. and here I drift. Safe.

After a night of frolicking, I was sitting up in my sleeping bag on the floor of an almost stranger's home. I was overwhelmed by displacement as I was wont to do during that time period. He walked by, reached down and tousled my hair. "A bunch of us are going to breakfast. Want to come?" A small touch, a simple analgesic, and the prick of pain vanishes.

So you want to know why I keep hanging around? Do you? It's not because I figured out how to change the color scheme to suit my palate. It's for YOU and it's for me. For the writers, past, present and future. You try out your wings, you surprise yourself and we all get to watch. ASTONISH ME! Astonish yourself! Do you feel that fish hook tugging along the edging of your mouth yet? *click, click, click* goes the reel with each flick of the wrist

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I love E2, that's why I'm back. Having been away from E2 for 5 years suddenly one day I thought, hey - I MISS E2

I'm back and nothing's changed, there are still an infinite amount of nodes to read that'll take me until I turn 60, I still recognize noders who I used to secretly admire under "my fellow noders" column and I still see countless users who I want to get to know, not to mention the "submit" button is still misspelled as "sumbit" - ah, some things really don't change.

I always feel welcomed, even if no one knows me. I made memories on E2 that I miss. I found the part of me that loved to write, the part I thought I had lost. Then it hit me - E2 has already become a PART OF ME.

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Welcome to Everything2.com. Congratulations, you found us by searching for something random on Google. Surprisingly, you can't stop reading more and more. But why not stay a while longer and become a user? No? Well, perhaps I can talk you into it.

You do however, have the ability to use a great search function, and find something you are looking for. Our inter-node web is perhaps one of the most extraordinary things here at E2. For instance, if you did a search for penis and clicked the ignore exact button, your results would bring up the following nodes:

To which side does your penis lean? - which you thought might be a political satire, but no, its actually a short factual about how everybody's penis lies to one side or the other on a normal basis.
Attempting to urinate with an erect penis - "An erect penis would not be problem in these circumstances if toilets were mounted on the wall..."A pep talk for your penis - "Men with free e-mail services (like Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) received so many e-mails barraging them with negative messages about their members that the little guys actually shrank over the course of a year. Sad."

A place that allows you to search for a word, find informative commentary and humor, and you leave thinking you know at least one more random useless fact that you didn't know before. Or, maybe you did even learn something useful, like how to better give a woman better head like in Cunnilingus FAQ. If you took that word to Google, you'd get porn, take it to E2, and you get tips and step by steps!

Community
I wish I could remember the long list of people who have commented on one of my writeups with constructive criticism. More than a few have caught my typos, spelling errors, and bad HTML. Others for better word choices, syntax, and grammar. Even a select few have taken me under their wing, and have substantially helped my writing skills. E2 has groups who have a bunch of writers with similar interests or knowledge, who come together on collaborating efforts. You can even start your own group of lackeys. I just started chess. In any case you'll make long term relationships with other geek-nerds who like to write too.

I'm writing to become a reporter. Due to E2 I've learned about ledes, and that alone is justification for joining E2. Further, every time I find something cool I bring it to e2 and share it with everyone else. Everyone else does the same thing too. E2 then becomes a collection of coolness.

A list for the rest of reasons why E2 rocks

AspieDad is absolutely right. MySpace would be better without all the garbage layout. E2 is simple to the eye, but complex to the brain. Not to mention our editors spell check. And we have soul.

E2 is a place to disrespect and earn respect.

Voting, to find out how good your stuff is, and to tell everyone else how good/bad their stuff is.

It's better than Wikipedia.

E2 needs you, and you need E2.

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1. The quality of the content.
You can spend hours trailing the softlinks, following somebody's train of thought and miraculously hopping from one excellent, irreverent or touching node to the other. The diversity of the writings is mindboggling, so boredom is out of the question. Here you will find poetry, prose, sci-fi, facts, fiction, diary entries, drivel. Indeed everything.

2. The quality of the content providers.
I have never been in contact with such a heterogenous group of individuals that nevertheless seem (apart from the usual small percentage of trolls, but in true E2 style our trolls are especially, er, trolly) to gel easily and adhere to a rather abstract and arbitrary set of rules and guidelines with such ease that you think that they have been genetically modified to get along spiffingly with each other. Just like the content, the providers differ wildly in nationality, age, profession, sex, sexuality, political background and ethnicity. Physical, real world (TM) meetings between members of E2 are amazing things: people who have never met each other (and probably would never come across each other if not for E2) bond immediately, happily chatting, partying and (sometimes even bonking) with each other like they've known each other for decades. It's a place for everybody, as everyone can find their niche and contribute.

So, you can either immerse yourself in the writing, in the community or -the best option- both. Everything2 will give you hours of fun, increase your knowledge and provide you with hundreds of best friends you never knew you had.

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I first arrived at this site whilst trying to do some research of a History project on the Arab-Israeli Conflict just over 3 years ago, and (at the risk of sounding clichéd) I haven't left yet.
I haven't written much either, an appalling average of 1 write-up every 82 days.

I've grown, matured, and generally found me beneath the hormonal teenage angst, and its the same old E2 I found all those years ago, just waiting to be discovered. The same old obscurity, lingering at the bottom of the fellow noders list, the random (and occasionally) educational catbox rants, and the endless supply of new write-ups to read. Everyday is a new adventure with E2, sometimes in the dusty corners of the node gel, or the glaring lamps of Cream of the Cool, every node unique, and that, my fellow noders, is why I love E2